This Group of Foundations Has a Message for Peers: Our Racial Justice Work Is Only Getting Started

This article was originally published on July 24, 2023.

A group of six foundations with combined net assets of just over $24 billion recently dropped an open letter and a document of recommendations designed to encourage and support their peers in continuing to pursue racial justice and DEI work in the face of today’s legal and cultural backlash to addressing racial inequities.

Both the open letter and the document, called “Power Sharing Framework Volume 1,” were the result of ongoing efforts by the “Power Sharing Task Force,” a group of six funders that formed in 2021, within the larger, 11-member Race & Equity in Philanthropy Group (REPG), which was founded in 2006. The letter praises increased attention to racial equity among foundations since 2020, but calls for greater efforts to upend power imbalances, including interrogating foundations’ own histories and the exploitation that generated their wealth.

“Without these conversations, despite stated goals to reduce inequities and improve society, philanthropy will continue to perpetuate systems of injustice. We must confront these issues and not only engage in a radical reimagination of philanthropy in a theoretical and conceptual way but ultimately develop appropriate policies and practices,” the letter states.

The task force had already planned to release the letter and their latest report sometime this summer, but June’s decision by the Supreme Court to outlaw affirmative action in education definitely influenced the task force’s timing. According to David Maurrasse, founder and president of Marga Inc., the consultant that facilitates REPG, the June 29 rulings in both Students for Fair Admissions cases led the group to feel “a kind of accelerated need to get the letter out.”

In it for the long haul

The Race & Equity in Philanthropy Group got its start in 2006 as a result of work done by Maurrasse and his company for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which commissioned Maurrasse to conduct a study about what foundations were currently doing to address issues of racial inequities and to learn more about equity policies that Casey might adopt itself. REPG grew from there, Maurrasse said, because the funders interviewed for the initial report decided that they wanted to learn more themselves.

Maurrasse likened REPG to a think tank, and the group has published several reports. In addition to “Power Sharing Framework,” REPG’s publications include case studies of foundation giving in communities of color and separate papers about incorporating racial equity and inclusion in communications and overall foundation strategies.

Today, there are 11 funders in REPG, including the Casey, Ford, James Irvine, Walton Family, and Winthrop Rockefeller foundations. While they’re all concerned with social justice in some form, the list of funders isn’t exactly the gang of lefties you might expect to make such a statement, with the notable inclusion of WFF and a few community foundations. That reflects a broad push we’ve seen in philanthropy to confront racial injustice. But it’s been followed by an intense cultural, policy and legal backlash, including philanthropy’s own hand-wringing over “wokeness,” grantee accountability and calls for pluralism. This, along with concern over the flighty nature of philanthropy, has prompted recent calls for funders to stay the course in their commitments to racial justice.

Now, as nonprofits and funders alike scramble to come up with strategies to defend their racial equity work in a new legal landscape, Maurrasse said that the foundations in REPG believe they can add value to those efforts by publicizing both the strategies they themselves are pursuing and what they are learning as their strategies evolve.

When it comes to REPG’s recent report on power sharing, Volume I is an easy-to-skim table of practices. Many of them read like the wish lists that nonprofits have had for years: Suggestions include providing multi-year, unrestricted funding, moving due diligence efforts out of the hands of nonprofits and into the hands of funders, and instituting trust-based and participatory philanthropy. Volume I’s greatest value may lie in the linked resources that are provided throughout the document and at its end, which seem like a step-by-step guide to walk funders through the process of democratizing how they move the wealth they hold.

More importantly in the current climate, however, the actual goal behind the document is to do the listed work specifically with BIPOC communities, according to Maurrasse. “Part of what we’re saying around power-sharing is to do power-sharing in collaboration and in dialogue with, and through listening to and learning from, the wisdom of the lived experiences of BIPOC communities," he said.

In addition to adding value in the fight to maintain some kind of progress on racial equity through research and information-sharing, Maurrasse said that REPG was also founded to “provide a certain level of company” to funders doing racial equity work “so they don’t feel isolated, and they don't feel like they are going too much out on a limb.”

Being in company with billion-dollar behemoths like Ford and Casey may well help funders, and the nonprofits that depend on them, feel safer — but only if other funders continue to step up as well in a fast-changing legal regime. Will funders, who Maurrasse admits are “especially risk averse” when it comes to issues like legalities and new terminologies, continue to walk their talk, or even keep talking, about systemic racism in America in the face of bullying politicians and threats of lawsuits alike? This is an open and vital question, particularly since so many funders just started coming on board the racial equity train since the 2020 police murder of George Floyd.

It’s a question Maurrasse said that REPG is currently grappling with. Talking about the dual tracks that have occurred since Floyd’s murder — the increased interest and energy around racial equity and the backlash to that interest and energy — Maurrasse said that REPG’s members are asking themselves to what degree the current backlash threatens funders’ interest in racial equity work, and how the nearly 20-year-old group can "provide the resources, the tools, the guidance and the communities of support that really increase the likelihood foundations, especially those more recently committed to this work, are going to stay committed to this work."

“There may be foundations that are fearful. There may be foundations that feel it may be too troublesome and not worth it to continue to pursue this kind of work,” he said. “And what we're saying is that now is the time to actually double down on that commitment.”

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